The first day of spring, the vernal equinox, is Tuesday. But with temperatures climbing into the 70s, it felt like the eastern United States was on the verge of skipping spring and plunging directly into summer.

Instead of lilting breezes carrying the promise of better days, it has been warm for the past few days.

"We're setting record highs, but not just by a few degrees'' he said. "We're not just setting records, we're smashing them.''

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Springing
into spring
The vernal equinox, the first day of spring, occurs when the sun shines directly on the equator and was set to occur at 1:14 a.m. Tuesday.
Days won't be perfectly balanced at 12 hours of sunlight, 12 hours of night.
The sun will rise at 6:53 a.m. and set at 7:06 p.m.
But the days will continue to grow longer until June 20, the summer solstice.

Ordinarily, Jacquemin said, temperatures in mid-March should be at 40 degrees during the day and 20 degrees at night. In the past few days, temperatures have reached 70 degrees or higher during the days and the mid-40s at night.

"Our lows are higher than our highs should be,'' he said.

While people have been praising the warmth and sunshine, it's very atypical.

"It's going to mean trouble,'' Jacquemin said.

Jacquemin said he fears the past warm dry winter, when precipitation was down in January and February, will lead to a drought by mid-year.

"If it's this warm now, what's it going to be like in August?" he said.

The unusual warmth is because of a jet stream pattern stuck in northern Canada.

In a normal year, the jet stream, the high-atmosphere current of wind that blows across North America, has a trough that loops down into the United States, allowing cold Arctic air to flow southward.

This year, Jacquemin said, the jet stream has stayed almost exclusively near Hudson Bay in northern Canada. The serious cold never reached the area.

"It never reached zero degrees,'' he said.

Because 2011 was so wet, the state's wettest year on record, reservoirs are still full. David Day, superintendent of public utilities in Danbury, said the city's reservoirs are at 100 percent capacity.

"Our normal for March 1 is 92 percent capacity,'' he said. "We're higher than normal.''

But Jacquemin said if things don't change, if the area doesn't start getting some coastal storms this spring, residents could be looking at a drought this summer.

"Things are fine now,'' he said of water levels. "But that could change very quickly.''